The New Office Space

After reading my rant about Starbucks and some of the comments on that post, Jackson sent in this guest column about how many are using indi-cafes in San Francisco as mobile office space. (Ritual is my favorite….) If you are not in San Francisco and have names of entrepreneur friendly locations you want others to know, leave the details/links to their location in the comments. If anyone wants to build a Google Map of all this, drop me a note. – Om

Forget Palo Alto garages — San Francisco coffee shops are where to get your startup off the ground. Internet cafes are emerging as an important place to get work done, hold meetings and network. Since writers, designers, developers and anyone else who can work from their laptop are going to show up, you can even recruit talent, publicize your project and even demo your product for potential users and investors.

On Charter Street, Greg Olsen writes about “Going Bedouin.” The idea is that instead of worrying about leases, infrastructure and support staff, a startup can stay nimble and focused by using third party services and mobile technology:

By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options, a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan – with workers as a roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of caffeine.

My own experience helping to organize the WebZine conference pretty much echoed this. No office space was rented, communication was primarily through email lists and a private wiki, and meetings were held at cafes with free internet, with notes and ideas quickly disseminated to those who couldn’t attend. When a contact was needed to help out with services such as advertising, sponsorships or donations, cell phones came out and calls were made, and issues were often resolved before the meeting was even over. Even during the conference itself, local cafes served as press rooms, panel development forums and, of course, somewhere to get some lunch.

Of course, the business of coffee shops is to sell food and coffee, not to take the place of VC-run incubator offices. While some have dealt with the problem of freeloaders by charging for their Wifi, this often turns geeks away. Coffee to the People in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury is trying to come up with guidelines, and the issue of coffee shop etiquette is a popular topic of discussion among digerati. Some cafe owners only share the WEP or WPA key with paying customers, limit the number of wall jacks to recharge batteries, or shut down wifi on the weekends to encourage offline socializing.

Here’s a list of cafes in San Francisco chosen by popular acclaim and personal recommendation. Any one of them will keep you fueled with caffeine, connected online and give you a chance to network with fellow travellers.

Ritual Coffee Roasters

This is the current ‘it’ cafe, and at any given time you can probably find a blogger who’s been BoingBoinged there, like Scott Beale. It’s Mission location makes the move from work to play just a short walk away.

Potrero is the neighborhood of choice for those who need to be close to 101 and 280. Before heading to Dogster headquarters nearby, Ted Rheingold often gets some work done there over his morning coffee.